The Shinobi Way
by furthercuriosities
Summary: When death is your business, you'd better get busy living.
1. Prologue

When death is your business, you'd better get busy living.

It's the unwritten mantra that follows shinobi around between missions and brings down the average married age. If you don't do it now, there's no guarantee you'll be back to do it tomorrow.

Sakura notes, it's also what makes Konoha a village full of not just characters, but caricatures.

Being a Shinobi means living a life of nuance and restraint for the good of the village, on a mission, you are a carefully honed, much invested in tool. Excesses of personality are a liability in this line of work. Anything less than perfect efficiency and focus, Sakura knows, is enough to get to you killed. Or worse, it's enough to jeopardize the village.

To emote is a hard earned, off-duty privilege. So when the mission or the training is over and done with and you drag yourself through the gates and into the bar, all the parts of yourself you've repressed come springing back in full force into the small spaces you allow them. Over a lifetime of repression and compression, this is what creates the likes of Rock Lee and Naruto.

Or any of them really, herself included. Sakura knows that this is probably what magnifies her need for acceptance and her naïve obsession with love. This is what powers Hinata's staggering self-consciousness and Kakashi's staggering _lack_ of self-consciousness. This is what fuels Shikamaru's passive nonchalance and Ino's aggressively terrifying vanity. After such careful practice and such tight control, no one has the energy to keep a rein on their natures anymore and so no one bothers. And no one realizes it.

As for the ones that do try to keep it all down, the ones who clamp down harder when the threats are gone, they've got it worst of all. Like a fist they can't unclench, they wind themselves up so tightly that eventually they cramp and bleed, giving way to Neji's frightening displays of anger, to the blinding obsession that makes Sasuke leave. It takes more than a full subscription of childhood horror stories to shape that kind of hate. It takes years of holding it all in, letting it build and build and build behind the perfectly stoney-faced facade of the perfectly blank ninja. It's a wonder, Sakura thinks, that their kind, the pre-sharingan-Kakashi brand of straight-edge ninja don't all spontaneously combust into little clouds of idiosyncratic confetti.

Being a shinobi is so much more than the jutsu and the reflexes, impressive as those may be. Sakura wonders what the civilians among them think of Shinobi, shinobi with their louder laughs and stronger drinks and more violent arguments (particularly when Sakura herself is involved, she'll admit). We are their undiluted conterparts, a full lifetime pressed into the periods between brief and debrief. A full lifetime compressed into a shorter life expectancy.

She like the way it is. Nobody seem to notice that shinobi live not just shorter lives, but more colorful ways. The village is a brighter place for it. All the feeling so carefully extracted from their village duties gets poured back wherever it'll fit. If this means more loyal friendships, more passionate romances, hell, more zany pranks and better sex, then Sakura decides, she's all for it.


	2. Tsunade

For the most part, the office of Hokage isn't nearly as exciting or desirable as any of the village higher-ups might have you believe, Tsunade thinks midway through a dull meeting with two council representatives.

She's never had the head for tactics like, say, Kakashi or Shikamaru, but she's quick-witted enough to keep the village running smoothly. This isn't all that difficult considering that virtually all problems can be solved with a well placed kunai. This is a shinobi village. There are no shortage of kunais.

Sure, the ideal placement of said kunai might differ in various scenarios, but Tsunade's got it boiled down to three concepts:

You can hire some big guy to all but charge in, break things, than hit somebody over the head with this kunai.

You can hire a smaller, quicker shinobi (or kunochi) to sweet talk the target, literally or metaphorically get in bed with it then slip the kunai out from under the pillow once they've dropped trou.

You can sit in a board room while both parties allude to various kunais of various sizes that may or may not be strategically placed in various numbers of the other parties estates, until at last, one party snaps, pulls out the big guns and points them down the other party's throat until they sign the desired agreement.

There is nothing more entertaining than watching Uchiha Sasuke snap at such a negotiation, Tsunade mused. Sometimes the ones that look least likely to do big and splashy well are the best at it. This would exclude Naruto of course, who could do big and splashy every bit as well as his big mouth suggested. There was a reason Naruto was never chosen to participate in such negotiations.

Desk-bound for the most part, Tsunade realizes that she's become rather voyeuristic in her thrill seeking. If she's not out there making people squirm, she makes damn well sure that she can still get her kicks at a distance. Making Rock Lee Konoha's official emissary to Gaara for example. Having Gai and Sai do anything together was another.

But after a particularly tedious bout of bureaucracy, when the questions Tsunade asked herself at the end of the day were Seriously? Today? Again? the answer the alcohol, and lots of it. If there was one thing her really resented about being Hokage it was the image she was supposed to maintain, and the little watchdog named Shizune who was dedicated to keeping that image painfully sober.

The office wasn't entirely without perks. The title, for instance augmented Tsunade's already considerable powers of intimidation in ways that insured she never had to wait for a table, never had to speak over anyone, and never had to put up with cheek from anyone but Naruto and Kakashi.

She lifted her head to look again at the two chunnin on the other side of her desk speaking seemingly endlessly about the fine print attached to the new city sanitation ordinance. It was a good thing she managed to find outlets, both alcoholic and non-alcoholic, because it was days like these that made her itch to unleash her infamous strength on the desk portion of her desk job – along with whomever might protest the destruction of city property.

There's one thing that the office hasn't changed about Tsunade, and that's her low tolerance for bullshit, which is why she feels no guilt over banging her mug on the desk to cut the men off mid-stream.

"Well, where do I sign?"

The two men blink at each other, trying to decide whether it would be kosher to forgo procedure in this instance.

"The elders can come to a decision about the new janitorial supplies perfectly fine without me," Tsunade says dryly. The packet of papers is handed over somewhat reluctantly. Tsunade wastes no time in snatching it up and signing with just the right mixture of haste and flourish. She lobs it back and before the chunnin can bring up the secondary matter of toilet paper rations, Tsunade has left for her next appointment, gone in a puff of smoke, her swivel chair still spinning.

Tsunade has always known how to make an exit.

She pops back into existence in one of the first floor conference rooms, just a hair above the floor, so that her graceful landing translates into a distinct bounce in her upper body. Mouth agape, the waiting Grass emissary's gaze lingers for significantly longer than is professional.

Yep. She's always known how to make an entrance too.


End file.
